Friday, January 13, 2017
The American Numismatic Society has nearly completed its Mellon Foundation-funded Humanities Open Book program. Eighty-two of 86 books have been enhanced by a Whitney Christopher, a TEI specialist from the King's College London DH program to link to people and places defined on Nomisma.org, Pleiades (either directly linked or by means of Nomisma's internal concordance system), VIAF, Wikidata, and the ANS's own archival authority control system. The final four books will go online soon. They are all available in the ANS Digital Library.
The number of people and places mentioned in these texts is a staggering figure, and it should be noted that we have focused on linking those entities that are most relevant to the texts, but we will continue to refine the linking over time, especially when it comes to Nomisma concepts and bibliographic references to Worldcat Works (links to which have not yet been incorporated). As Nomisma expands further into the Greek world and other domains of numismatics (after the ancient period), we will return to these ebooks to insert or replace links to Nomisma mints, people, and political entities.
Beyond relevant people and places, we have inserted hundreds of links to IGCH records (about 170 different coin hoards are cited in 400 locations in a handful of books), to the ANS collection, and to coin types defined in OCRE or CRRO. So far, more than 100 coins in the ANS and 6 in the Smithsonian American Art Museum have been identified by their accession numbers, although one of the four remaining books to be published will soon include nearly 70 more links to ANS coins. There are many more coins referenced in these books that may now belong to the ANS, but were not accessioned at the date of publication. A curator with more specific knowledge will need to identify these in the future.
One of the most often cited hoard is the Demanhur Hoard (IGCH 1664), which is mentioned in four books and on various pages of two of Edward Newell's notebooks. By linking archival authorities mentioned in these texts, we have greatly enhanced access to the works by and about Edward Newell and other prominent numismatic figures associated with the Society. A user of the ANS's authority portal (built on EAC-CPF) will have access to books written by Newell in our digital library, as well as his archival materials. Furthermore, mentions of Newell from the books written by other scholars will appear under annotations. In his case, he is mentioned in 18 other books, sometimes in multiple sections.
Like Mantis, the OCRE and CRRO config files have been updated to link to our archival SPARQL endpoint, and therefore annotations about specific types are accessible directly through types defined in these system. Nearly 50 types in OCRE are linked from Roman Medallions, and a researcher can drill down into a specific section of the book from RIC 5 Gallienus and Salonina 1.
Finally, through the links to Pleiades, each section in each book that mentions an ancient place will be accessible in Pelagios.
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